Anthroposophical Medicine: Disputes and Dangers in Cancer Alternatives

May 11, 2012Aberdeen decides against alternative medicine chair: Paul Jump (Times Higher Education)
A university has decided against a controversial proposal to establish a chair in a brand of alternative medicine that advocates mistletoe as a cure for cancer.
March 21, 2011Anthroposophic medicine at the University of Michigan? Say it ain’t so!
Posted to the Respectful Insolence blog by Orac – If twenty years ago someone had told me that one day that not only would my medical alma mater be publishing dreck like this, but that it would have formed an interdisciplinary program devoted to it, I would have told that person he was delusional. If you had told me that anthroposophy would be part of a larger program of woo run by a physician who is described as having “studied herbalism and spiritual healing for 14 years with a Native American Healer” and as having research interests that include the “use of herbs, energy healing, environmental healing, and the therapeutic relationship” or that a physician trained in “functional medicine” would be a big part of a program in anthroposophic medicine there, I wouldn’t have believed it.
October 18, 2010Anthroposophy: A Risk Factor for Noncompliance With Measles Immunization (PDF)
Edzard Ernst, MD, PhD, FMedSci, FSB, FRCP, FRCPEd.
January 9, 2009Measles Outbreaks: not just a British tragedy, but a European one as well.
By Matthew Hartfield. Counterknowledge
March 19, 2008Measles Epidemic (in German)
A large outbreak of measles in Salzburg, Austria has been reported. …at a Waldorf school in Salzburg. The the local health department is trying to limit the damage by offering information and recommending vaccination for all children at the school who are not yet vaccinated. Apparently, in Nordrhein-Westfalen were the latest large epidemic occurred, out of 2000 infected, one child died and there’s evidence of lasting damage due to encephalitis among the survivors
February 25, 2007Steiner’s Quackery
by former Waldorf student Roger Rawlings
January 30, 2007Growing Up Being Made Sick by Anthroposophy by Robert Smith-Hald.
December 23, 2006Mistletoe as a treatment for cancer: Has no proved benefit, and can cause harm
By Edzard Ernst, BMJ 2006:333; 1281-1283.
December 23, 2006Subcutaneous inflammation mimicking metastatic malignancy induced by injection of mistletoe extract
By A.I. Finall, S.A. McIntosh, W.D. Thompson, BMJ 2006:333; 1293-1294.
December 6, 2006Anthroposophic Medicine by Robert Todd Carroll. Skeptics Dictionary
December 21, 2004Mistletoe – viable alternative cancer treatment, or just a placebo with dangerous side-effects? Edzard Ernst in The Guardian
September 2002Bucking The Herd by Arthur Allen: Atlantic Monthly article on a vaccination controversy in Boulder, Colorado
1997Anthroposophical Medicine by William Jarvis, PhD, National Council Against Health Fraud